1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 10 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART THREE

The Essential 100, No. 49: Super Mario Kart

Cover Story: 20 years ago, Mario appeared in his first true spin-off and created a genre in the process.

W

hen Shigeru Miyamoto first created Mario, he originally thought to call the then-nameless hero "Mr. Video." His thinking was that Mario -- or rather, Mr. Video -- would serve as an all-purpose protagonist, able to stand in for any role his creators could possibly conceive. Despite going with the more affable moniker "Mario," Nintendo put Miyamoto's Mr. Video plan into effect from the very beginning, thrusting the character into a number of Game & Watch titles shortly after the debut of Donkey Kong. A couple of years later, the Famicom (NES) home console launched in Japan, and even before the revolutionary Super Mario Bros. debuted Mario had his hands full with cameos in a great many early NES titles.

Still, these were mere footnotes in game history, grist for trainspotters to compile their "complete list of Mario appearances" wikis, or a meaningless factoid for video game trivia contests. NES Golf, Tennis, Pinball, or even later titles like Dr. Mario had nothing whatsoever to do with the character; they were simply standard games into which the character had been shoehorned for greater visibility (and salability). It wasn't until 1992, more than a decade after his debut, that Nintendo finally and at long last gave its most important character his own true spin-off.

Super Mario Kart wasn't simply some random unrelated game with Mario's image pasted on top. Nor was it a direct Super Mario Bros. derivative, either. The game took Mario and friends into a genre far from the one that made them top-shelf characters while still managing to feel intrinsically Mario-like. It changed the rules of a genre to fit the character. It quickly leapt to blockbuster status -- and deservedly so.

At its most basic level, Super Mario Kart capitalized on the success and technology of Super NES launch title F-Zero. With that game, Nintendo's designers had put the special capabilities of their new 16-bit console to dazzling effect, employing the system's built-in ability to stretch and rotate bitmap backgrounds as a means to create the illusion of a race track. F-Zero represented a divergence from the console tradition of scaling up segmented sprites to simulate a road (a standard in racers since the '70s, a la Atari's Night Driver and Sega's Turbo). The polygonal tracks of arcade hit Hard Drivin' were still a few years away for home consoles, so F-Zero represented the most impressive leap the genre could reasonably take while constrained to fundamentally 2D tech. Fast, smooth, and sleek, F-Zero stunned gamers with its aggressive, high-speed action.

Super Mario Kart borrowed the basic technology that powered F-Zero but used it in an entirely different way. Where F-Zero seemed blisteringly fast, Mario Kart seemed pokey. Where F-Zero presented itself with frenzied heavy metal and an aura of coolness, Mario Kart offered more subdued music and a decidedly un-awesome aesthetic that involved fat guys and monkeys driving go-karts. And yet, gamers revere Mario Kart as a masterpiece of game design and go back to the original Super NES game time and again (despite the widespread availability of its many sequels), whereas F-Zero is simply remembered with some fondness as a fun-but-dated racer that seemed a lot cooler in 1991.

What made Super Mario Kart so great? For starters, it took a wildly different approach to racing than had ever been seen before. One part racer, one part combat game, Super Mario Kart reworked the genre as a more cutthroat battle in which competition had less to do with cornering well and really boiled down to aggressiveness and a general lack of mercy. Combat racing wasn't a concept without precedent; Nintendo itself had made a mint publishing Rare's R.C. Pro-Am (a game in which miniature vehicles could fire missiles at one another) on NES. However, Mario Kart was considerably more intuitive and immensely more fun than any of its predecessors. The silky smoothness made possible by its F-Zero underpinnings made for a racer that controlled well, gave players a clear view of the track ahead with its over-the-shoulder camera perspective, allowed for complex track designs, and offered plenty of flexibility.

Secondly, Mario Kart made for an excellent franchise title -- a fact rendered possible by that very flexibility. This was no callow, generic racer into which Nintendo had copied-and-pasted familiar sprites; Super Mario Kart was a Mario game through and through. The entirety of its design revolved around the tokens and iconography of the classic Mario games, incorporated platform mechanics, and even found a purpose for coin-collecting. Nintendo's designers clearly took a long, hard look at the racing genre and said, "How can we make this more Mario?" And rather than simply creating tracks that resembled Super Mario World's Ghost Houses or Bowser's castle, they reworked the rules of racing and nature of the tracks themselves to reflect the concept of racing as seen through a Mario lens.

So while it gave us a Ghost House and Bowser's castle as race tracks, it went a step beyond using those concepts as mere window dressing. It added track hazards like Thwomp traps, pits that could be leapt via ramps or a power-up, and spinning bars of fireballs taken straight from the x-4 stages of Super Mario Bros. The weapons took the form of familiar Mario elements: Shells and mushrooms, feathers and Starmen. The characters raced on more or less identical go-karts, but they handled differently according to their own quirks. Massive Bowser was slow to accelerate but an unstoppable force on the straightaway, whereas tiny Toad could reach his maximum speed quickly but would go spinning into oblivion if a heavy-class racer collided with him. Mario, of course, represented the all-'rounder, strong in all categories but superior in none. Meanwhile, collecting coins would speed you up and provide a buffer against crashes... and in the event you went flying off the track, Lakitu was on hand to retrieve you from the void, having traded his arsenal of Spiny eggs for a fishing line. Top it off with a simple but fun head-to-head deathmatch mode and you have the makings of a true classic.

It wasn't long before every other developer under the sun muscled in on Mario Kart's turf. Mascots as wide-ranging as Sonic, Mega Man, and Crash Bandicoot had their own turn behind the wheel of a go-kart. Yet none of these Marios-come-lately could even begin to compare with the original, and not because of any innate superiority on Mario's behalf. The problem with Mario Kart's imitators is, well, they were simply imitators. Super Mario Kart shone because it wasn't copying anything; on the contrary, it represented a deep and comprehensive attempt to rework two disparate concepts (racing and plaforming games) and make them function together in harmony. It worked not because it shoved Mario into a racing game, but because Nintendo built a racing game around Mario. In the process, they created something new, different, wonderful, and -- most of all -- enduring.

1UP Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Parish always liked to race with Toad until Nintendo decided to inflict the worst video game character voice ever recorded upon him. These days his racer of choice tends to be Dry Bones. The undead don't need to taunt.

Comments (24)

Loved it

I know I'm in the minority, but the SNES original was by far my favorite. I'd have to place it somewhere it my top 10 games of all time. I spent hours perfecting the different courses by myself in addition to all the time I spent playing the multi-player mode with my neighborhood friends. To me it lost a lot of its charm when it went to 3D, especially the battle mode. Not really sure why.

I owned and played the N64 version a decent amount, but didn't enjoy it nearly as much. I bought the gamecube version as well and spent even less time playing it. I didn't even bother with the Wii version, although I might pick it up one day.

Amazing

So rarely do we find great writing online. Many strive to achieve it but most fall disastrously short. You my friend, have written one of the finest articles that I have had the pleasure of reading recently. One that perfectly describes all of the reasons that I love this game while simultaneously thrusting me into a state of nostalgia conjuring forth many fond moments of my childhood wherein my two brothers and I would face off against one another in head-to-head combat(racing). I was brought here by a link on IGN and I am immensely glad and fortunate that the frist 1up article that I have ever read was written by the editor-in-cheif. I will be back to enjoy, what I hope to be, many more eloquently written and stimulating articles. I look forward to the rest of this list.

Thanks for putting time into crafting a great piece instead of perfunctorily throwing together some words of bias opinions to review or describe a game in order to fill a webpage.

Bleh.

I have the completely opposite reaction to Jeremy's work. I'm always left feeling like the dude thinks that simply weaving a bunch of ten-dollar words into his pieces will trick his audience into thinking that he's said something meaningful. Sort of like you, actually. The both of you say in several hundred words what most of us could say in fifty, and it's rather off-putting, if for no other reason than it really makes the both of you look like you really love the sound of your own pompous voices, so to speak.

BULLSHIT

"F-Zero is simply remembered with some fondness as a fun-but-dated racer that seemed a lot cooler in 1991."

This is just bullshit. Where are you guys getting this stuff?

This is historically bad videogame writing, I'm seeing it all over the internet and it concerns me a bit. Where else are you guys (readers) getting your videogame news these days? I can't decide who ruined who, but somehow IGN, EGM, and 1UP have imploded into just pure bullshit. Sad.

The Best

Me and my bro argued for ages about which Mario Kart was best. SNES or 64 ? SNES of course. Best Mario Kart ever. I have been playing this game for 20 years and never tire of it, the battle mode is so much fun.

Funny debate I also had

Also debated this with my older sister and friends from when I was a kid. Actually, even when I was in college it wasn't that out of place to find an old N64 plugged into some TV with just Mario Kart 64 available (I think rubber-band AI matters less when you're drunk; and, being the jerk with a blue shell or lightning bolt is more fun). I can't help enjoying SMK64 just for nostalgia reasons, even though I also got SMK for the SNES not long after it was released, and I think it's because I just played the 64 version more often as I got older.

I can't be the only one...

I'm a fairly big Mario Kart fan but started with the later 3D games. It was a few years before I got to go back and play the original, and based on all the hype I was expecting big things. And was severly dissapointed.

My main gripe is that the handling is really slidey and horrible, especially when compared to the DS version (which is probably my favourite in the series, and has more or less the same control layout as the SNES so the disparity seems even greater), but also the flat tracks made it difficult to see where to go, from what I remember the items weren't quite as well distributed between 1st and last as later games, little things like that all added up to me really not enjoying it. The only thing about the game I really loved was the blue feather (which I completely agree should make a comeback). Similar thoughts go out to the GBA version. I've given that numerous goes at playing over the years to see if it was just me at the time not enjoying it but it's still the case.

So I'm in this odd position where I'm incredibly glad the game did well as it spawned a franchise and genre I love, and can see why it was so popular, but I don't enjoy it at all and would struggle to reccomend it (or the GBA's SC) to anyone.

I Think it's a Matter of...

...what era you grew up in, and thus, which games you first started out playing. Certainly, the controls are much more forgiving in the recent installments, but that makes them less skill based than the the SNES and GBA versions, which were designed with an old-school mentality.

Incidentally, I'm also a big fan of the DS game, which sported some great course designs and had that wonderful mission mode. The Mario Kart games since then haven't seemed as inspired.

Fantastic Game!

My childhood right here

I agree with everything, and also agree with the guy who prefers this one to the new ones. The only new thing I would take now (isn't new, just expanded) is multiplayer... and even then I think the 1v1 or 1v1v6cpu is the better route to go.

I'm One of Those Weird Guys. . .

. . .who prefer the original Super Mario Kart (along with, to a slightly lesser extent, its GBA cousin) to all the "improved" 3-D sequels that came thereafter. Not only did these later games mishandle the carefully crafted item balance of the original and remove its curvy, slip-slidely course designs, but they also forgot about the charm and innocence that suited that first one so well.

GameBoy Advance Mario Kart

Super Curcuit, IMO, is the best skill based Mario Kart game ever made. Sadly it's been stuck on the GameBoy Advance only. (Unless you're one of the few that have the Gamecube's GBA Player's. But still, I'd Love to see that one be given the HD treatment on the virtual console for the Wii (and Wii U, I guess, even though I do not plan on getting one anytime in the near or distant future)

Not wierd exactly

i totally see where you're coming from. The balance has been broken in recent games especially with the bullet bill and such. However, the Mario Kart 64 game remains my favorite...it's only the 2nd game in the series and didn't really break anything (the spiny shell wasn't made to fly over large gaps and obstacles. Plus it introduced a slew of more diverse tracks which fittingly impressed as the series transitioned to 3D.

Of course, the 4 player innovation of the N64 helped create big memories.

Modnation Racers

Mario Kart stood above all kart racers only up until recently with Sony's Modnation Racers. Some would argue otherwise, as Modnation wasn't perfect but it fixed many things that the MarioKart games never addressed. (Defense for example)

...Mario Kart is still great as we look back and it truely speaks volumes that finally, after 20 years of superiority in the genre, Mario is only now meeting it's match. Having played the Beta, Little Big Planet Karting stands to be the king of Kart racing in just a few short weeks.

Nope.

I don't think you're going to find too many people who agree with you. Mod Nation had kick-ass creation tools, especially on the Vita, but it had little going for it besides that. And it's not a matter of imperfection, it's a matter of the actual racing -the whole point of these games- being utterly unispired at best.

Same goes for LBP Karting, which was developed by the Mod Nation folks, incidentally. I bought it on the cheap for my PS3, and after playing it for an hour after downloading it, haven't bothered to go back to it since. They're just not very good racing games. While I don't have any particular fondness for the original Mario Kart, I still feel like it's a far tighter, more well-designed game than those two could ever aspire to be.

Great article!

F-Zero

I haven't really thought about the similarities, but that makes perfect sense, graphically.

I think I'm a bit off in that I remember F-Zero somewhat more fondly just because it was more rare. We'd rent Mario Kart all the time, but F-Zero, along with Star Fox was one of those games you could get in a hotel room, along with a more button-heavy SNES controller, while Nintendo was advertising its Super FX chip quality.